I have spent years researching my mother's family history and have just completed a trilogy from my 4x gt grandparents in the mid 18th cent through to 1947. Let me tell you all about what life was like for my foremothers:
Susanna Fearnley married a Lieutenant of the Royal Artillery, Robert Carlile, in 1768. She had two babies in Yorkshire, and then they went to Newfoundland in 1773 with the army. She endured 2 winters in the bitter cold, along with all the other army wives, gave birth to another son, then the family was posted to Boston in 1775. They suffered appallingly through the siege of Boston, Robert was badly wounded at the Battle of Bunker Hill. The baby, Benjamin, died of smallpox during the winter, and then Susanna died in childbirth because she was malnourished and the deprivation was terrible. The baby girl, little Ann lived only an hour.
Susanna and Robert's elder son, Thomas, and their daughter, Susannah, suffered terrible PTSD though it wasn't recognised as such back then. They were only 6 and 4 when their mother died and they were shipped back to England alone as their father was needed in America.
Thomas lost all his money in 1812 when his woollen mill in Pudsey burned down. His wife Mary tolerated his moods and the loss of money - though her family helped out. He killed the suitor of one of his daughters because he was beneath her socially. He got off. Mary had 9 children, and had lost 5 of them before she died. One of her daughters died in childbirth, one, along with her babies died of cholera in Hamburg. Her daughter Sarah fell in love with a maltster, but her father refused to let her marry him as he wasn't good enough for her. She had to run a school to make ends meet, and she and Uri waited 12 years until her father died before they could marry, in 1846.
Thomas' grandson, also Thomas, heir to a large estate in Herefordshire, shot the coachman when he was drunk/on cocaine because it was alleged he had been overworking at Oxford .He too got off. He married a Welsh girl, a miner's daughter, Mary Eliza, for her beauty and kindness and was an abusive drunkard, squandered all his money and left his wife penniless when he died at 55, presumably of disease of the liver. His only daughter had to go to work as a secretary, despite being raised a lady, was raped by the employer's valet while she was under the influence of her first encounter with champagne at Newmarket Ladies' Day, was forced to marry him because as an unmarried mother she had no employment future, and her child would be born a bastard. They parted at the registry office door. She raised her daughter alone, in dire poverty.
Three of the four sons of the drunk B.A.(Oxon) emigrated, or spend years abroad. Their mother Mary Eliza received two telegrams on the same day informing her that her two sons were missing in action at Gallipoli. One survived, to be nursed by my wonderful grandmother, who saved so many lives in Exeter and in Malta. But she couldn't vote despite her intelligence and her dedicated service to her country.
Granny was raised by her wealthy father in Exeter along with her two sisters who were forbidden to marry or to work. One, a talented artist was prevented from going to art school because it was far too bohemian. Her youngest sister had had measles as a young child was was rendered completely deaf and partially blind. They were to be the companions of their elderly parents, with no autonomy or life of their own. Granny escaped because of the war and the need for VAD nurses. One of their maids had a premature stillborn baby and in despair, left the body on the roof of the house. She was of course dismissed without a reference, lucky to have escaped being charged with the murder of the child. Who knows what happened to that poor girl.
There is so much more, illustrative of the truly awful lot that was women's up until the 1970s, when we first feminists began to protest the expectations of women and their total lack of personhood. I could go on and on...yes, even more than I have already, but really, the disadvantages girls faced in my youth were terrible.
Maybe I will. Go on and on, I mean. Wait for it.